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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Oswin Takes: The Mulhouse Christmas Market

Yeah yeah yeah, I know it's almost mid-January, but since our Chrismukkah tree is still up I feel ok in posting about our European Christmas Market Road Trip extravaganza.

The weekend before Christmas we loaded up the car and headed out to explore three Christmas markets, in three different countries, in three days...

...it was a feat we weren't sure we'd be able to accomplish, as this was Oswin's first big roadtrip, but spoiler alert: baby girl was a total rockstar.

In planning our trip, Doc researched that there was a really great Christmas market in Freiburg, Germany, along with French and Swiss Christmas markets on the way in, and on the way out, respectively. Both of the aforementioned markets were only 45 minutes away, so it really was a no brainer. To Germany, the Alsace region of France, and Switzerland we would (attempt) to go!

We got to Mulhouse (in France) at dusk, and were greeted by what is touted as the most colorful Christmas market in France. It did not disappoint. As the sun went down the market lit up, including a purple lit old church, and pink buildings on the square of this really cool little town.

We had some vin chaud to warm our bones, and literally the best sauerkraut dish I've ever had in my life to fill our bellies. (We liked it so much we've made it several times at home already...) As if hot sauerkraut on a cold night wasn't good enough already, add lardon and potato dumplings to it and I'm happy as a piglet in merde.

The Mulhouse market was fun, but one complaint I had was that the ornaments were really expensive. We were really surprised. Most ornaments that we saw were twice as expensive as their identical counterparts in Freiburg. We had fun at Mulhouse, but I'm glad we had planned to spend the majority of our time in Freiburg. However, Mulhouse was a great stopping point to start feeling a little festive, grab a little grub, and stretch out our legs before hopping on the autobahn to Germany.